themselves a better public security, and took efficient steps for their protection.

"In February, the Thirteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution was presented to the Legislature for action. This amendment provided for the unconditional abolition of slavery within the United States, but did not secure any compensation for the value of the slaves within the loyal States. The subject was referred to the judiciary committee of the State Senate. Two reports were made; one, the majority, favoring the rejection of the amendment; the other, its acceptance, with the request that Congress give compensation for the value of slaves held by owners who were loyal to the Government during the rebellion. The majority report was accepted, both in the Senate and House; in the former, by a vote of twenty-one to thirteen; in the latter, by fifty-six to twenty-eight. The Thirteenth amendment was soon after adopted by the requisite number of States, and in this way slavery quietly lost its legal position, though its life had been practically extinguished by the events of the war.

1 During the progress and at the termination of the war, many facts and statistics were preserved and compiled in the interest of science, going to show the relative condition of the people of Kentucky with that of other States and nations. Particularly does this refer to the statistics of the Sani1 Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth P. 372.

A Table of Measurements of American White Men, Compiled from Report of the Sanitary Commission, Made from Measurements of the United States Volunteers during the Civil War, by B. A. Gould.

N. York, N. Jersey, Pennsylv'a' 273,026 67.529 140.83 37.06
Ohio, Indiana.

Michigan, Missouri, Illinois.
Seaboard slave States

Kentucky, Tennessee

34.11

22.02 295

34.38 22.10 237

220,796 68.169 145.37 37-53 34.95 22.II 486
71,196 67.822 141.78 37.29 34.04 22.19 466
140.99 36.64 34.23
50,334 68.605 149.85 37.83 35.30
3,811 67.419
37.53 34.84
6,320 67.510 143.59 37.13
31,698 67.086 141.35 37.14

21.93 600

22.32 848

21.97 184 34.81 22.13 237

34.35

22.II 177

30,037 66.741 137.61 36.91 34.30 22.16 103
7,313 67.258 137.85 37.57 34.69 22.23 178
83,128 66.951 139.18 37.54
89,021 66.660 140.36 37.20
6,782 67.337 184.14 39.39

35.27
84
34.74 22.09 106
35.37
22.37 221

...

KENTUCKY'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE WAR.

665

tary Commission, as carefully collated and classed by the distinguished mathematician, Dr. B. A. Gould, now well known as the astronomer of the Argentine Republic. Besides its humane work of charity, during the war, this society left a valuable body of fact in its carefully-made measurements of two hundred and fifty thousand men. These measurements were so tabulated as to separate men from the different parts of the country. From this excellent digest, the extracts given in the accompanying table are taken. The measurements of troops from Kentucky were doubtless far more numerous than from Tennessee, as the Federal troops from Tennessee were few in number.

It should be noticed that the Confederacy received the youth and strength mainly from the richest part of the Kentucky soil. It is nearly certain that the averages given in the tables would have been distinctly greater if they had included the forty thousand men who drifted out into the rebel army. Even without these corrections, the form of the men as determined by the measurement of fifty thousand troops is surprising. Their average height is nearly an inch greater than that of the New England troops; they exceed them equally in girth of chest, and the circumference of head. In size, they come up to the level of the picked regiments of the Northern armies of Europe. Yet these results are obtained from what was a levy en masse, for such was the call to arms that took more than one in ten of the population, both as infantry and cavalry. These troops did very effective service in both armies.

1 The rebel exiles who braved all consequences and forced their way through the lines to form Morgan's cavalry, the First Kentucky brigade of infantry, the commands of Marshall, and others, and the earliest volunteer Federal regiments, were probably the superior element of these Kentucky contributions to the war. They were the first runnings from the press, and naturally had the peculiar quality of their vintage more clearly marked than the later product, when the mass became more turgid with conscripts, substitutes, and bounty volunteers. Had the measurements and classified results applied only to the representative native element, the standard of average of manhood would have been shown to be perceptibly higher. Though the ancestry of these soldiers had been a fighting people, yet for forty years. their children had known and followed only the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, and the industries of trade peculiar to the Commonwealth, with the limited exception of the Mexican war interlude, which made an inconsiderable draft of the few thousand volunteers during its brief existence. They may be said to have been wholly unused to the spirit, and untutored in the arts, of war. Yet their record of bold and daring skill, of heroic courage, and of indomitable endurance, was equal to that of the best troops on either side of the combatants in this great civil war, and certainly unsurpassed by the soldiers of Europe, of the present or any past age. Take, for illustra1 Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth

P. 375.

tion, on the one side, the force of Morgan; we find in this remarkable body of men, great capacity at once for dash and endurance. Its leader, suddenly improvised from the ranks of private citizenship, not only organized, aligned, and led this splendid squadron, but possessed the intuitive genius to develop a new feature in the art of war, in which was a rare combination of vigilance, daring, fertility of resource, and an impetuous power of hurling all the husbanded force of body and mind into a period of ceaseless activity. Theirs was the capacity to break through the lines of the enemy, to live for weeks in an atmosphere of battle, fighting and destroying by day, and marching by night, deploying in front of the enemy, or attacking his lines and posts far in the rear-a life that only men of the toughest and finest fiber can endure. Yet this force owed its peculiar excellence to the qualities of the men and the subordinate commanders, as to the distinguished. leader. Such a list of superior subordinate commanders as Basil Duke, Hines, D. Howard Smith, Grigsby, Cluke, Alston, Steele, Gano, Castleman, Chenault, Brent, and others, was perhaps found in no other such brigade of Kentucky cavalry. Yet at the head of their regiments and brigades, such leaders as Wolford, Green Clay Smith, Hobson, and others, showed qualities of a high order, and their commands proved to be the most effective Federal cavalry of the war. The fighting of the Federal regiments of Kentucky infantry and cavalry, throughout the great campaigns and battles of the war, showed the men to be possessed of the highest soldierly qualities; but so merged were they in the great Union armies, and so little of distinctive Kentucky history has been collated or published of these, that we find it difficult to illustrate with the recount of their exceptional services.

1 The most marked example of the character and success of the Kentucky troops in the Confederate infantry service has been given us in the well-preserved history and statistics of the First Kentucky Confederate brigade. We have already noted the daring and gallantry of these troops in the battles of Donelson, of Shiloh, of Baton Rouge, of Murfreesboro, of Chickamauga, and of other conflicts, to Dalton, Georgia, in May, 1864. On the authority of General Fayette Hewitt, this brigade marched out of Dalton eleven hundred and forty strong, on the 7th of May. The hospital reports show that up to September 1st, not quite four months, eighteen hundred and sixty wounds were taken by the command. This includes the killed, but many

were struck several times in one engagement, in which case the wounds were counted as one. In two battles, over fifty-one per cent. of all engaged were killed or wounded. During the time of this campaign, there were not more than ten desertions. The campaign ended with two hundred and forty men able to do duty; less than fifty were without wounds. It will be remembered that this campaign was at a time when the hope of the Confederate armies was well nigh gone, and they were fighting amid the darkness of despair.

LOSSES DURING THE WAR.

667

The data afforded us does not give us an accurate idea of the destruction of life traceable to the war. The returns of the adjutant-general do not include the loss from death or wounds, the hundreds of small fights between the Home Guards, and other irregular troops, and the raiding parties of the enemy. It is estimated that in the two regular armies the State lost approximately thirty-five thousand men by wounds in battle, and by diseases in hospitals and elsewhere contracted in military service. To these may be added several thousands whose lives were sacrificed within the State from irregular causes. There must be added to this sad reckoning of consequences the vast number of men who were shorn of their limbs, afflicted with internal disease bred by camp and march, or aged by the swift expenditure of force that such war demands. Omitting many small rencounters and irregular engagements in which there was much loss of life, but which have no place in our histories, Captain L. R. Hawthorne, in a manuscript summary of the history of the war, enumerates one hundred and thirty-eight combats within the borders of Kentucky.

In the closing scenes of the great war drama, of Confederate soldiers there were surrendered, by General Robert E. Lee, 27,805; General Joseph E. Johnston, 31,243; General Richard Taylor, 42,293; General E. Kirby Smith, 17,686; scattering and prisoners of war, 101,402-a total of 220,429. By the official reports, the aggregate Federal military force was then, in the field and enlisted, 1,000,516 men, besides the prisoners in the hands of the Confederates, and released at the surrender, the mightiest army of modern times.

1 Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth P. 377.

CHAPTER XXIX.

(1775-1886.)